High School Psychology

Abstract

Although institutional recognition of high school psychology is fairly recent, psychology and psychological subject matters have a history dating to at least the 1830s. By the middle of the twentieth century, high school psychology courses existed in nearly all U.S. states, and enrollments grew throughout the second half of the century. However, courses were usually elective, and most teachers lacked degrees in psychology. Studies in the latter half of the twentieth century suggested that high school psychology courses did little to prepare students for college-level psychology, probably because the high school classes often did not include core subject matters of psychological science. However, the 1990s brought several landmark developments for high school psychology, including establishment of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPPS), a number of university-sponsored institutes providing professional development for teachers, and inauguration of the Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology program. Today, high school psychology teachers enjoy increased recognition within the American Psychological Association (APA), availability of significant teaching resources, and national standards to guide course development. A million students annually take high school psychology, with about a quarter million taking the AP Psychology exam. The course is now recognized as an important first exposure to psychological science.

Keywords

high school psychology Advanced Placement Exam

More than a century ago, Ebbinghaus (1908/1973) famously noted that psychology had a long past, but a short history. Although he was commenting on the broader discipline of psychological science, Ebbinghaus, if he were writing today, might express the same sentiment concerning high school psychology. After all, the relatively recent creation in 1992 of the American Psychological Association (APA)-affiliated Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS; Weaver, 2005) and the College Board Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology exam (Benjamin, 2001) might suggest a fairly brief history for psychology in high schools. Yet, secondary school psychology has a past that predated James’s (1890) classic Principles of Psychology by at least several decades (Roback, 1952), with the teaching of high school classes in “mental philosophy” a half century before publication of the Principles (Rolison & Medway, 1982). According to Roback, numerous textbooks existed for these courses, selling perhaps a half million or more copies in the years 1831–1881.

Thus, although high school psychology has sometimes failed to receive sufficient notice from many in the wider circle of psychological science, it is not a new idea; in fact, secondary schools were teaching psychological content before the founding of many American colleges and universities. In this article, prepared in recognition of the 40th anniversary of Teaching of Psychology (ToP), our purpose is not to provide an extensive history of high school psychology, but instead to focus on its development and influence during the life of ToP.¹ If we think of the last three quarters of the 19th century as high school psychology’s childhood, and the first three quarters of the 20th century as its adolescence, the developmental metaphor would suggest that the past 40 years, beginning in the 1970s, have seen it blossom into adulthood in ways its founders would never have imagined.

Adolescence and Early Adulthood

Soon after the middle of the 20th century, researchers (e.g., Coffield & Engle, 1960; Engle, 1956) noted that high school psychology courses existed in at least 43 American states, that the number of schools adding psychology to the curriculum had increased for more than 50 years, and that both total enrollment and average class size had also increased over the levels found by previous surveys. Then, as now, more girls than boys enrolled in psychology (Coffield & Engle, 1960; College Board, 2012; Smith, 2013).

Status of High School Psychology

In the years leading up to and following the establishment of ToP, psychologists (e.g., Breland, 1978; Epley & Schwerin, 1977; Kingston & White, 1977; McNeely, 1968; Thornton & Williams, 1971) in several states began to study and describe the status of high school psychology. In a national study, Thornton (1967) found that schools in all American states but one (Louisiana) offered psychology, although only 14.5% of the high schools in those states taught it as a separate course. In those grades for which the schools offered psychology, 5.4% of the students were enrolled, representing 1.4% of the total number of high school students. Kansas, with 7%, had the largest proportional enrollment (Thornton & Colver, 1967). Thornton (1967) also reported that psychology offerings were increasing and that no school in his sample had decreased its offerings; however, the course appeared mostly in large high schools, which offered it mainly for senior students (Thornton & Colver, 1967). By the beginning of the 1970s, 15% of high school seniors enrolled in psychology in Florida, and White, Marcuella, and Oresick (1979) confirmed the trend toward increasing enrollments with their finding that by 1975, in a large sample of Massachusetts high schools, more than 12% of students were taking psychology classes. Psychology was thus a small but growing discipline in secondary schools in the 1960s and 1970s.

Despite occasional reports of innovative educational approaches such as a college psychology fair for high school students (Benjamin, Fawl, & Klein, 1977) and establishment of a high school psychology laboratory (Christiano, 1975), teachers reported in the 1970s that their primary teaching activities involved a combination of lecture and discussion. One textbook, Engle and Snellgrove’s Psychology: Its Principles and Applications (1969, 1974), stood out from others as the most popular in several reports (e.g., Breland, 1978; Epley & Schwerin, 1977; Goldman, 1983), although Psychology for Living, by Sorenson, Malm, and Forehand (1971), also enjoyed frequent use (Epley & Schwerin, 1977; Kingston & White, 1977). Psychologists debated whether the high school course should be “applied” or “scientific” (Goldman, 1983), and applied/personal adjustment topics (e.g., mental health, individuality, personality, development) were among those most frequently taught (Engle, 1967; Kingston & White, 1977; White, Marcuella, & Oresick, 1979). Most courses were one semester electives (Rolison & Medway, 1982). High school psychology teachers rarely held degrees in psychology (Abrams & Stanley, 1967; Parrot, 1975; Rolison & Medway, 1982), but in at least some states, including Iowa (Epley & Schwerin, 1977), New Jersey (Breland, 1978), and Massachusetts (White et al., 1979), most teachers had taken at least several college-level psychology courses (at the time, both Iowa and New Jersey offered teacher certification in psychology).

The 1970s marked an increased awareness of the importance of high school psychology by the APA, including establishment in 1970 of the Clearinghouse for Precollege Psychology and publication of a high school psychology newsletter, Periodically (Benjamin, 2001), which continues today as Psychology Teacher Network. The APA also recognized the need for teaching materials for high school psychology teachers, and embarked upon the Human Behavior Curriculum Project, a planned 5-year project that in reality took 11 years (Goldman, 1983) and produced a limited number of teaching modules that never found favor with high school teachers. Nevertheless, by 1975 the APA high school psychology newsletter had 12,000 subscribers (Benjamin, 2001), and the professional developments of the 1970s allowed secondary school psychology, once considered less than legitimate, and a “stepchild,” to be finally “legally adopted by the profession” (Goldman, 1983, p. 229). However, despite this movement toward recognition by the psychology establishment, in the 1980s, high school psychology teachers continued to design courses around a personality developmental orientation, with the aim of self-understanding and social and interpersonal skill development, and with biological and research-oriented topics less frequently taught (Ragland, 1992; Ware & Johns, 1990). Further, by the end of the 1980s, the role of psychology in preparation of teachers for secondary school social studies (as reflected in required psychology coursework) was declining (Evans, Dumas, & Weible, 1990).

High School Psychology Goes to College

Following Cole’s (1960) finding that college students reported little positive effect of their high school psychology experience, and that it may even have driven some away from the field, other researchers began to examine the relation between high school and college psychology classes. Dambrot and Popplestone (1975), for example, found no difference in college-level general psychology achievement between students who had completed a high school psychology course and those who had not. Federici and Schuerger (1976), also comparing general psychology students who had taken high school psychology to those who had not, found no significant differences between the groups for overall grades, pre- or posttest knowledge of psychology, or class attendance. Both groups came to general psychology with positive attitudes toward the field, and those attitudes strengthened in both groups from pre- to posttest. Federici and Schuerger attributed the lack of transfer from high school to college psychology, at least in part, to differences in content; they observed, as had others, that high school classes tended to emphasize personal adjustment and mental hygiene, whereas college courses were more likely to treat psychology as a science. Hedges and Thomas (1980) also found no significant difference in final introductory psychology grades between students who had and had not completed high school psychology. However, in their sample, those who had taken psychology in high school had significantly higher pretest scores and midterm grades than those who had not taken the high school class, and low-achieving students who had taken high school psychology received higher final grades than low-achieving students who had not taken psychology in high school. Hedges and Thomas suggested that more able students could overcome their lack of background more readily than less able students and that the high school course therefore provided some advantage to lower-achieving students.

Carstens and Beck (1986) also found no difference in final introductory psychology grades between students who had or had not taken a high school psychology course. Those who had completed high school psychology scored higher on topics frequently taught in high school (e.g., personality, mental health), but not on those less often presented in high school (e.g., physiological psychology, research methods). These researchers also found a positive correlation between a strong high school background in natural science (biology, chemistry, physics) and performance in college-level psychology and on a test of the infrequently taught topics. However, Griggs and Jackson (1988), in a replication designed to eliminate possible confounding effects of college experience and college-level natural science courses, reported no significant correlation between high school natural science and scores for the infrequently taught psychology topics. Like Carstens and Beck, Griggs and Jackson found a significant correlation between high school psychology and scores on frequently taught topics, and between high school natural science and final grades in the introductory college class.

Approaching Maturity

Despite a mixed record as measured by course content (i.e., the lack of “scientific” topics) and by transfer to college achievement, as well as the possibility of declining representation in requirements for teacher training, high school psychology faced the 1990s with a growing cadre of teachers eager for improved access to teaching activities and materials, current information about psychological science, and opportunities to exchange ideas with their peers (Ragland, 1992). And, although most teachers at the dawn of the decade were unaware of available APA resources (e.g., high school teacher affiliate program, an APA statement on high school curriculum, The High School Psychology Teacher newsletter), a substantial majority held master’s degrees (often in social studies or education), many had completed two or three graduate courses in psychology, and the average teacher had more than 7 years of experience teaching psychology (Griggs, Jackson, & Meyer, 1989).

Thus, high school psychology, with experienced teachers hungry for improved information and materials, student enrollments that by mid-decade would approach 900,000 (Ernst & Petrossian, 1996), and on the verge of the contributions and productivity characterizing the successful middle adulthood that Erikson (1963) termed generativity, was poised to blossom.

High School Psychology Comes Into Its Own

The 1990s, and especially the decade beginning in 1992, were to be momentous for high school psychology. Weaver (2005, p. 97) called the period 1992–2001 “an incredible 10 years for high school psychology.” Seminal events were the first AP Psychology exam and founding of TOPSS (officially approved by the APA Council of Representatives in 1993), both occurring in 1992, and a series of national institutes for teachers. These developments led to distinctively new approaches to professional identity, scientific rigor, and organizational influence for high school psychology teachers and their field.

AP Psychology

As early as 1967, Abrams and Stanley suggested that the APA should advocate for an AP program allowing high school students to gain college credit for academic work in psychology. Although the APA began discussions with the College Board soon after 1970, it would be nearly two decades before AP Psychology became a reality, with College Board approval in 1988, and the first exam in 1992. The long delay was due, at least in part, to the perception that high school psychology courses were aimed toward personal adjustment and lacked rigor and scientific content. Benjamin (2001, p. 957) referred to this situation as a catch-22, noting that the AP psychology exam might motivate teachers to improve their courses, but that the exam was not available until the courses were improved. Eventually, however, advanced placement Psychology gained College Board approval, and 3,914 students took the first AP Psychology exam in 1992 (College Board, 2013).

Since its inception, the AP Psychology program has experienced an average annual growth rate of nearly 23%, and although growth has slowed in recent years, it has continued, with an annual rate of 11% for the most recently reported years (2011, 2012; College Board, 2013). According to the College Board, 220,361 students completed the AP Psychology exam in 2012, and preliminary data indicate that the number was about 240,000 in 2013 (A. Mazzacano, personal communication, June 26, 2013). Since 1992, more than 1.75 million students have taken the exam, about 65% of them girls (College Board, 2013).²

In addition to its obvious influence on students, the AP Psychology program has created a variety of opportunities, resources, and materials for high school psychology teachers. These have included course standards, exam information and resources, course audits, classroom resources (e.g., books, reference material, videos), and reviews of teaching materials (AP Central, 2013a), as well as institutes and workshops (AP Central, 2013b). If, as a number of sources (e.g., American Psychological Association, 2013b; College Board Research & Development, 2011; National Center for Education Statistics, 2009) have suggested, about 1,000,000 American students currently complete a psychology course each year, the AP Psychology program has become a major direct influence on a third or more of those students (about a quarter take the AP exam, and even more take the AP course, but not the exam), and likely an indirect influence on many more whose teachers have benefited from the educational activities and resources available from AP-related sources (Hakala, 1999).

The AP program has also affected college and university programs in important ways. Many college faculty participate in a variety of AP activities, including course and exam development, exam scoring and score setting, and syllabi review (AP Higher Education, 2013). And more than 90% of American colleges and universities accept AP exam scores for course credit and/or advanced placement (AP Students, 2013). Research published by the College Board (but conducted by independent researchers) has shown that AP students take more courses in their discipline than non-AP students, do well in subsequent courses in their discipline, and achieve higher grade averages than non-AP students (AP Higher Education, 2013). AP Psychology clearly played a key role in the developments that prompted Weaver (2005) to describe as “incredible” the decade beginning in 1992.

TOPSS

If the AP program drew attention to the importance of high school psychology, it was TOPSS that gave voice and authority to its teachers. Although APA had previously formed committees to deal with high school psychology, including the Committee for Psychology in Secondary Schools (CPSS; Sarabando, 2002), teachers had no real power or control over their own areas of interest within the organization. In fact, the CPSS (which included only two high school teachers and had disseminated information and newsletters) was disbanded, along with a number of other APA committees, in the 1980s due to financial exigencies (Sarabando, 2002). With the formation of TOPSS in 1992, teachers at last had an organization that allowed them full participation and control of their own meetings and agenda within the APA umbrella (Benjamin, 2001). The TOPSS Committee meets twice each year with other APA committees at spring and fall consolidated meetings.

Since 1992, TOPSS, which currently has approximately 2,000 members (E. L. Chesnes, personal communication, June 18, 2013), has played an active role in advocating for psychological science in high schools, and has provided many resources and leadership opportunities for high school psychology teachers. The aims of TOPSS have included recruiting and retaining psychology students, elevating the legitimacy of psychology via action on school policy issues, promotion of professional development and lifelong learning for teachers, increasing professional identity, and promotion of high standards in the teaching of psychology (Ernst & Petrossian, 1996). The organization has developed numerous unit lesson plans for use by teachers, sponsored student essay and poster contests, and cosponsored (with APA–Clark University, and the American Psychological Foundation) the annual APA–Clark University Workshop for High School Teachers (Longmann, 2012). TOPSS has also established a program of awards to recognize outstanding psychology teachers across the country (American Psychological Association, 2013e).

Among the major accomplishments of TOPSS are the National Standards for High School Psychology Curricula (American Psychological Association, 2013d; Brewer, 1999), the Guidelines for Preparing High School Psychology Teachers (American Psychological Association, 2013c), presentation of several hours of programming each year at the APA national convention (American Psychological Association, 2013e), and development of rigorous, up-to-date unit lesson plans (Ernst & Petrossian, 1996).

Through the auspices of TOPSS, high school psychology has become a visible, influential participant in the teaching of psychology. In the wake of the founding of TOPSS, numerous local and regional teachers’ groups formed to provide professional development and networking; these included groups in California, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah (Weaver, 2005), and Wisconsin (Germantown School District, 2013), and other groups have formed in subsequent years. At about the same time that TOPSS came into being, psychologists were developing ideas for improving collegiality across the various levels of TOP, explicitly acknowledging the importance of including high school teachers (e.g., Weiten et al., 1993). By the end of the 1990s, when the APA sponsored the Psychology Partnerships Project, high school teachers, alongside faculty from community colleges and 4-year colleges and universities, were integrally involved in planning, presenting, and participating in this national forum with the purpose of establishing meaningful working relations between psychology educators in all kinds of institutions (Blair-Broeker & Halonen, 1998; Mathie, 2002).

National Institutes

As Ragland (1992) noted, high school psychology teachers at the beginning of the 1990s desired in-service education to improve their professional preparation and to update their knowledge of the evolving discipline of psychology. Earlier, Breland (1978) found that 86% of the teachers she surveyed were interested in attending workshops or seminars, although only 29% had actually done so. Although the National Science Foundation (NSF) had offered programs since the 1970s, Ragland (1992) reported that only 7.6% of her sample had attended such a program. The time was right and the need was great for projects aimed toward providing psychology teachers with scientific updates and contemporary teaching activities and techniques.

Eight institutions (Beaver College³, Eastern Illinois University, Ithaca College, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Northern Kentucky University, Texas A&M University, University of Houston, and Western Carolina University) hosted national institutes for high school psychology teachers between 1992 and 1999 (Weaver, 2005), with two (Beaver College and Texas A&M) beginning in 1991. Except for Nebraska Wesleyan, all the institutes were 4-week residential programs funded by NSF; the Nebraska Wesleyan institute was 2 weeks in duration and funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (Keith & Ernst, 1997). The institutes provided teachers discussions about psychological science, updates on developments in the field—often with nationally recognized researchers and teachers—and expertise in instructional technology (e.g., Craig, 1996). Institute participants produced curricular unit plans, in coordination with TOPSS (Ernst & Petrossian, 1996), and Nebraska Wesleyan participants prepared a number of teaching activities for inclusion in Volume 4 of the APA Activities Handbook series (Benjamin, Nodine, Ernst, & Blair-Broeker, 1999). One institute (Nebraska Wesleyan) provided some of its teachers on-site consultation at their home schools subsequent to their participation.

This golden era for high school psychology produced not only rich networking opportunities and increased knowledge and enthusiasm for teachers but also gave rise to many of the leaders who shaped the early work of TOPSS and the AP Psychology program. The high point was 1994, with four institutes, but by 1999 only one (Northern Kentucky) remained, and despite a number of efforts additional NSF funding was not forthcoming (Weaver, 2005). Currently, the College Board continues to provide multiday programs at multiple locations for AP teachers (AP Central, 2013b), and the annual APA–Clark University Workshop for High School Teachers provides a brief residential program for 25 teachers each year (American Psychological Association, 2013a).

The Rest of the Story

Although high school psychology is not yet in its late adulthood, it is perhaps not too early to speculate about the remainder of its generative period and its future progress toward integrity (Erikson, 1963). In the early 21st century, psychology in high schools has begun to take on the trappings of a mature science. The year 2003 brought the first psychology textbook authored by high school psychology teachers—a book that is now in its third edition (Blair-Broeker & Ernst, 2013). Textbooks exist that are tailored specifically to the AP Psychology course (e.g., Myers, 2011), and high school teachers are represented in such venues as the APA Board of Educational Affairs. Of the 34 AP disciplines administering exams, psychology had become the sixth largest by 2011 (College Board, 2013), and having in place the National Standards (American Psychological Association, 2013d) and the Guidelines for Preparing High School Psychology Teachers (American Psychological Association, 2013c) represents an important advance for high school psychology. But challenges remain.

The existence of national standards for high school psychology can provide a framework for teachers to organize and expand their courses, but only if they are implemented (Bristol & Gillis, 2001). The guidelines for teacher preparation are similarly fundamental, but will be effective only to the extent that they too are implemented. The recommended coursework specified by the Guidelines (American Psychological Association, 2013c) provides the skill areas advocated in the APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major (American Psychological Association, 2007), and is similar to models that Weaver (2005) suggested were sufficiently compact to allow students to also complete coursework in a second teaching field. The latter issue is important because many states do not endorse psychology as a single teaching subject, and many schools do not have full-time psychology teachers; as Henderson (1994) noted, “Preparing students to teach only psychology would condemn them to unemployment” (p. 107). Further, as long as psychology exists as an elective in high schools, even though it is one of the most popular electives (American Psychological Association, 2013c), it remains vulnerable in the face of budget pressures (Weaver, 2005).

As Ernst and Petrossian (1996) asserted, the existence of national standards provides the legitimacy associated with the ability to evaluate local curricula against professionally accepted criteria. The high school psychology course is the foundation forming the psychological perspective of approximately 1,000,000 American students each year (American Psychological Association, 2013c). If, as Benjamin (2001) suggested, too many of those students still experience classes that lean heavily toward self-discovery and adjustment, rather than contemporary psychological science, we clearly have more work to do. As Alexander (1919) counseled nearly a century ago, “In the generation that is to create the new life the teachers should be leaders. But first we must clear away the dust of the past” (p. 150). High school psychology has made great strides toward clearing away the dust of the past since Cole’s (1960) conclusion that it was driving students away from the field. For many students, high school psychology will be their only exposure to our discipline; it is important to us all that it continues to thrive and to age with integrity.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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